


Take Pride In What Is Sure To Die

by marsakat



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Angst, Devotion, Hurt/Comfort, Magic, Multi, Unrequited Love, Witchcraft, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-29
Updated: 2016-03-29
Packaged: 2018-05-29 20:32:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6392638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marsakat/pseuds/marsakat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His mother once told him,<br/>"There was a little old witch who lived beneath the bridge.<br/>She'd grant you what ever you wished.<br/>But be careful in choosing,<br/>Because you don't know what you'll be losing,<br/>Out there under the bridge."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Take Pride In What Is Sure To Die

**Author's Note:**

> This story came to me as a single sentence out of the blue.

The bridge was just some logs felled by stones and lashed together with vines when the little witch made it her home.  At that point she was just a dormouse that would grant a wish when called.  There wasn’t much business at the time, just a wistful girl or pompous boy who wished for love or riches.  It was quite boring initially but she granted the wishes and took her price and waited

They made her bridge stronger; stones and she took a human form.  They didn’t trust the strange woman beneath the bridge except when she would give the healing potions.  The witch still granted the wishes of the young and old, and they paid in all ways they could.  She wouldn’t take their money, however.  She took their years and their health, sustaining her even when they decided her magic was sacrilege and set upon her little home under the bridge with torches and pitchforks.

She slipped into the form of the dormouse again for many years until they forgot about her.  Now the bridge was even bigger, and more people passed by on their way to trade.  So the witch went back to trading until once again the mobs realized religion.  Her magic wasn’t satanic or devil’s work.  It was complex and dangerous certainly, if you did not know what you were doing, but it was just the rearrangement of situations and nature’s order.  Those with little minds could hardly understand.

* * *

  _“Please make him love me.”_ So she gave love, but she took away the ability to create life. __  
“Please have my father disown my brother so the land becomes mine.” She took the bounty from the land. __  
“Please let me have a child. A healthy one.” This one she gave a child and took the sadness from the eyes of the couple.  
_“Please cure my wife.”_ The wife lived, but the wisher lost his home in a fire. That was the most she could do  
_“Please stop this pain.”_ She took the pain, but also the warmth in the bones.  That was the lowest price she could bargain.

* * *

 The bridge changed again from stone to metal by the time she felt it safe to no longer be a mouse and there were metal carriages upon the roadway over the brook that was now a wide river.  She had seen so many people, that this new figure that picked their way across the rocks and gravel was of little interest to her.  She’d felt the passing of eons and kingdoms and who was this little mouse against the cogs of time?  The witch was sitting upon a stone heated from the warmth traded from bones long since turned to dust.  She no longer bothered to wear the mask of youth given for love.  The witch was tired, but the stolen years needed to be lived before she could become a wisp of memory, a night’s tale.

“What do you want?” her voice croaked to the strangely dressed man.  People these days looked so peculiar compared to the centuries before.

“I’ve heard about you in a story my mother told me. I wanted to see if you were real,” he replied.

“Yes I am,” she didn’t much want to talk, “What do you want me to give you?”

“It’s—it’s not for me.  It’s for my friend.  His eyes are so hollow and his mind causes him pain.”

“You have to give in order to receive.”

“Give me his pain. I will give him my light.”

And so it was.  The other’s heart eased and the nightmares went away.  His smiles didn’t have the pinching behind the eyes from being forced upon them.  The panic episodes disappeared altogether, and Tyler was able to sleep soundly at night.

* * *

 Months later, or was it years? Josh returned to the witch under the bridge.

“Thank you for helping him.  I nearly lost him but now his life is saved.”

The witch said nothing to the man with no light in his eyes.  This was the first time she had ever been thanked, but no one ever came to her for just conversation.  He had the aching in his soul with a pain that wasn’t even his, he would most certainly ask for a reversal.  That couldn’t happen.  A person could not renege on their own trade.  The rules would not permit this.

“But now his body is sick.  He can barely walk.  Please give me his illness and he can take my health.”

The witch was flabbergasted.  She’d made this trade many times before but never to a repeat customer.  She was getting old, far too old.  So she made a spell, but only gave part of the illness to the man with the bright hair, giving some of her own acquired health away.  She was tired of hoarding.

So Tyler’s breathing eased and he was never ill again.

* * *

 The third time Josh came to the witch, she was contemplating moving out of this shack under the bridge.  The world was wide and scary, and she had never seen it.  Were there others like her still out there?

“Why do you take everything bad from this man?” the witch asked him, “He is not your lover.” She could sense these things about the relationships she played with, and this confused her.  In all her years she had never seen devotion such as this.  Surely this time he would ask for something of himself.  He was so pale and the bones made sharp angles of his face and body.

“He deserves the stars,” Josh said, thinking of what else he could ask of the witch under the bridge.  “He told me today that he was so lonely.  Please give him a wife to love him and give him purpose.”

“What about you?”

“I’m too broken for him to ever love.  Give him whoever is meant to love me, and I will be satisfied to know he has a happily ever after.”

Against her better judgement, she did. And Josh was content to live without a lover while the one he truly loved filled the emptiness in his chest.  And Tyler found a sweet summery wife who made the days count and Josh was so happy for them.  He was a shell, full of Tyler's darkness, his punishment for loving too much.

* * *

 But Tyler was worried about the man who was by his side for all his ups and downs.  He couldn’t remember the last true smile he’d seen across his friend’s face, and the laughter was an echo, a mimic of one’s impression of true joy.  Josh was just a shadow, and Tyler felt as if he’d crumble away in the wind.  He found his friend lying on the ground one day, shaking and trapped in a vision of blood and pain, forehead burning with the fevers stolen from Tyler.  He prayed for his friend to live for him, but Josh, in a lucid moment, shook his head to say there was nothing to be done.

He confessed to the visits to the witch under the bridge, his breaths ragged and strained.  Tyler cried, and Josh felt angry that this was a pain that the witch hadn’t given to him instead of Tyler.

“We need to fix this.”

“It can’t be fixed.  What is done is done.  I made my bargains and you just have to enjoy them.  I did this for you.”

“You’ve given me so much; please let me give something to you.”

“Hold me.  It doesn’t hurt so much when you’re holding me.” 

Josh was ready to die, and was he dead?  He was aware of Tyler’s heartbeat against his ear as the other carried him to the river.  He was light as air; he must already be gone from life.  And Tyler would be so much better off without him.

The witch heard the commotion as Tyler came sliding down the bank with a broken body in his arms.

“Please help me!” He yelled to her, and kneeled in the gravel, “He’s dying!”

“I know,” she said, for Josh only had minutes left.  She could feel the ebb flowing from the man would had given everything away.  His pain would be over soon, another life she’d ruined and stolen.  The witch was envious.  She wished she would be nothing more floating over the air and into the summer breeze.

“What will you give me?”

“Take my life.  Take my soul,” whispered Tyler as Josh’s body spasmed in pain in his arms.

And she was struck by an idea.  One last act and she’d be free.  The witch placed her gnarled hands upon the dying man’s forehead and his eyes fluttered open for a brief moment.  His breaths were gasping and long apart; the death rattle was upon him.  Tyler was still holding his friend, ready to die himself so that his friend would live.

The witch looked deeply into Tyler’s eyes and saw the stars and universes of hope, and then she closed her eyes for the last time.  She took the pain and loneliness and illness from Josh, and his body stopped dying.  The witch gave in return the years she had accumulated and was just wasting away as she bided her time.  It would be best to give them to someone who would use it for spreading joy.  Someone who never took as much as she had.  He would give more goodness than she ever had in her millennia of life.

* * *

 Josh awoke on the gravel under the bridge, the rushing of water a cacophonous song of rebirth.  Tyler still held him even though the danger had passed.

“How?” he said as he realized where he was, “No! Don’t tell me you traded something with the witch!”

“No,” Tyler said, smiling through tears drying on his cheeks, “She traded with you.”

“She’s gone?”

“She’s gone.”

The witch was neither human nor dormouse.  She was dust on the wind.  She was a tale to tell.

“I love you,” Josh said as they watched a fish swim by, “I did it because I love you.”

“I know,” Tyler said, afraid to ever let go of this extraordinary creature.

“You don’t have to love me back.  I don’t need it.”

“You are kinda stupid sometimes,” Tyler said and pressed his lips to the other.  When they separated there was a glimmer in Josh’s eyes that had been gone for too long.  They walked away from the bridge that was now only a bridge, holding hands, together forevermore.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not the type to cry, but writing this actually screwed me up for a couple of hours afterward. I live for hurt/comfort so I hope you enjoyed this. (Shivermepickles or my sideblog teeentyonepilots on tumblr. Come cry with me)


End file.
